@Max, Regardging your comment, "Cypress Semiconductor has shipped over 1.7 billion units of its PSoC 1 Programmable System-on-Chip... Good grief -- 1.7+ billion units -- I would never have guessed!"

I understand your surprise. It's been a quiet revolution for Cypress in the MCU space, but keep in mind that PSoC1 is the original platform from which CY launched their touch screen controllers and capacitive sense controllers that find their way into all sorts of consumer electronics, control panels, and white goods.

That is cumulative sales to date, Luis, and that seems about right to me. PIC has been the most popular microcontroller out there for the past 2-3 decades but as you pointed out the tide is turning and Microchip is not coping well with the large and increasingly growing ARM ecosystem of microcontrollers. With the Internet of Things, I bet ARM-based micrcontrollers will dwarf the 7 billion figure within the next decade.